


If.

by Lucien_Cipran



Category: Original Work
Genre: Flash Fic, Flash Fiction, Original Fiction, original writing - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23913598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucien_Cipran/pseuds/Lucien_Cipran
Summary: Flash fiction using the prompt: write a 300 word story where the first, last, and one line in the middle start with the word 'if'.





	If.

If I were still a living, breathing being I’m sure I would be panicking. But, since I am not, I am perfectly calm. This creates confusion with the screaming people around me. The gunman had come from nowhere, the entire theatre had been focused on the play in front of their eyes. That’s why it was so easy. The first few shots were droned out by the singing from the stage, but then the panic broke out.

I was sat in the middle: row H, seat 60. My seat. I lived in this theatre, literally as well as metaphorically. The storeroom was my safe-haven, my own little space, in the same way that H60 was my seat. The theatre was mine yet this ‘man’ thought he could come and ruin a perfectly good rendition of Romeo and Juliet with his overpowered weapon.

If I wasn’t dead, I would have helped the mother-to-be in the seat in front of me. I would have helped clear a path for her, but I knew no one would listen to me. It’s not like they could even hear me in the first place. Instead, I remain seated and let the chaos unfold itself around me; I couldn’t exactly die again. I see the bullet tear through her flesh, digging a tunnel through her chest, lodging itself somewhere as she wraps her arms over her enlarged stomach, desperate to protect her child. Even so, she takes her last breath.

By now the seats are almost empty. Screams and cries echo around the auditorium as the man takes more victims, stealing the life from their lungs. How selfish. It reminds me of my own demise: a selfish man with a gun, the bullet tearing through my head. If only I was still alive… I would’ve helped.


End file.
